Secularization

Patrikios, Stratos; Zuckerman, Phil, ed. (2016) Secularization. In: Religion. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Religion . Macmillan Reference USA, Farmington Hills, pp. 19-36. ISBN 9780028663616

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Abstract

The presence and function of religion in society is foundational in Western thought. Since the first attempts by thinkers such as Plato (427 – 347 BCE), more than two millennia ago, to define the good life, the good citizen, the good judge, and the good ruler, a negotiation between the absolute and revealed, on the one hand, and the rational and relative, on the other, has been the central pursuit of philosophical debate (Tarcov and Pangle 1987). As part of the absolute and taken for granted, religion has played a constant and central part in that negotiation. Centuries after Plato, St. Augustine (354–430 CE), who made explicit the distinction between a religious domain and a separate secular domain, argued that salvation and happiness could come only from divine grace and revelation, rather than from human justice and reason as recommended by the pagan Greek philosophers (Fortin 1987, 197). In the nineteenth century, along this longstanding normative debate between those for and those against religion’s influence in human affairs, a second question crystallized. The question asked whether modern life would push religion to the brink of extinction, and the anticipated answer was affirmative. This is known as the secularization thesis.

  • Item type:Book Section
    ID code:57140
    Dates:
    Date
    Event
    31 May 2016
    Published
    Notes:Please acknowledge as follows: Patrikios, S. (2016). Secularization. In P. Zuckerman (Ed.), Religion: Beyond Religion. (pp. 19-36). (Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Religion; Vol. 3). Farmington Hills: Macmillan Reference USA. reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan. The following statement must also be displayed: 'This extract is taken from the author's original manuscript and has not been edited. The definitive, published, version of record is available here: http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?N=197&Ntk=APG&Ntt=+150730966114099306754661377721772341846&Ntx=mode%2Bmatchallpartial.
    Subjects:Political Science > Political theory
    Department:Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > Government and Public Policy > Politics
    Depositing user: Pure Administrator
    Date deposited:27 Jul 2016 13:22
    Last modified:08 Apr 2024 13:20
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/57140
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